The prevailing immorality and coarseness were in keeping with the absence of sympathy with all elevation of thought and sentiment.  “If a man of any delicacy were to attend the discourses of the young fellows of this age,” wrote Steele, “he would believe that there were none but prostitutes to make the objects of passion."[127] “Every woman is at heart a rake,” thought Pope.  Women were generally treated with disrespect, and distinctively female virtues were almost without appreciation.  It is instructive to contrast the deeds of arms done in honor of a mistress in the Middle Ages, and the elevated sentiments held regarding women in what Addison called a “barbarous age,” with the actions by which young men sometimes showed their devotion in the earlier part of the eighteenth century.  The latter were as extravagant as the former, but extravagant after how different a manner.  One young fellow, distinguished himself by drinking wine strained through his mistress’ chemise; another, by drinking out of her shoe; another, by having her slipper torn to shreds, cooked, and served up as a dish.  Coarseness of thought naturally brought on coarseness of action.  Horace Walpole wrote in 1737, “’Tis no little inducement, to make me wish myself in France, that I hear gallantry is not left off there; that you may be polite, and not be thought awkward for it.  You know the pretty men of the age in England use the women with no more deference than they do their coach horses, and have not half the regard for them that they have for themselves."[128]

Against the grosser faults of immorality and indecency Steele and Addison preached.  But even they were insensible to an elevated view of the relations between men and women.  Such a view was, however, taken by Defoe; a man whom Steele and Addison, as well as the polite world in general, looked upon as an adventurer, and one whose opinions on social subjects they disdained.  “We reproach the sex every day,” wrote Defoe, “with folly and impertinence, while I am confident, had they the advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than ourselves. * * * I cannot think that God ever made them so delicate, so glorious creatures, and furnished them with such charms, so agreeable and so delightful to mankind, with souls capable of the same enjoyments as men, and all to be only stewards of our houses, cooks, and slaves."[129] Defoe stands almost alone in his remonstrance against the neglect of female education.  But he stands more isolated still in his appreciation of womanly virtues, and in the enthusiasm with which he could speak of them.  “A woman well-bred and well-taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behavior, is a creature without comparison.  Her society is the emblem of sublimer enjoyments; she is all softness and sweetness, love, wit, and delight; she is every way suitable to the sublimest wish; and the man that has such a one to his portion, has nothing to do but to rejoice in her and be thankful."[130]